...just finished TOS on Sunday, and after starting TAS the same day, I finished that too just 15 minutes ago.
I guess you could say I've been promoted from geek ensign to geek lieutenant junior grade after all that.
As a 15-year-old who's never watched a show over ten years old, it wasn't the easiest. What first drew my attention to this show was J. J. Abrams' 'Star Trek' (technically my "journey through all Star Trek" began much earlier than October, but I don't think this counts
). It was fun, cool, and felt like Star Wars, something I'm a huge fan of. I watched 'Star Trek Into Darkness' not too long after, not as good, but still a pretty cool action flick.
I never gave Trek much thought before this, but my dad was a fan of TOS back in his childhood, and told me I'd love it. And since I enjoyed the movies, I thought "what the hell, let's give it a shot". I got Netflix, got a proxy to change to American Netflix, and started TOS.
Here I am now.
I can sum it up as... good. I appreciate how special it was for its time, I appreciate the impact it made on pop culture and just how progressive it was for a show airing in the 1960s, but fuck me if it didn't feel very dated at times. Most of the time I was able to get around that, but some episodes were just.. ugh. At worst, very campy, sometimes sexist, or just kind of repetitive "monster-of-the-week" stuff. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of great episodes, ones that I really enjoyed, but there were times where I felt like moving right on to TNG, mostly throughout Season 3. Also, I one way or another ended up on my phone while watching most episodes (pacing wasn't very good TBH). Boy, that season was a drag. Three or four real good episodes, tops.
The positives definitely outweigh the negatives though. The chemistry/relationship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy is a lot of fun, and there was some character development in that regard. When you look at the show and compare it to others of its time, it deserves all the praise it gets as one of the greatest sci-fi shows ever made, if not the greatest.
The Animated Series, well, I guess you could consider it year four of the five-year mission. While it's probably even harder to watch than TOS for its even more dated look (despite being younger than TOS) and shocking animation, it has some good episodes/stories in there, and with only 22 episodes of 24 minutes length each, you can breeze through them all in a week or less. Also, 'The Counter-Clock Incident' is a much more satisfying ending than 'The Turnabout Intruder'. I mainly watched it for completionist purposes.
I ordered the 'Stardate Collection - Movies 1-10' on Blu-ray a few days back to watch over Christmas, and I'm super excited. I think I'll go TMP, TWoK, TSfS and TVH, and then move on to TNG. Reason being I'm watching in strict order of original air date.
It feels like I'm almost finished the starters, and it's time for the main course. I've been super excited to watch the original films for a long while now, I've been hearing about how amazing TNG is, as well DS9 being as good, if not better, to some, so... this could be a large main course.
Anyway, might be a pointless post to some, not needed, but I just really wanted to share that.
Thanks for giving it a read
I guess you could say I've been promoted from geek ensign to geek lieutenant junior grade after all that.
As a 15-year-old who's never watched a show over ten years old, it wasn't the easiest. What first drew my attention to this show was J. J. Abrams' 'Star Trek' (technically my "journey through all Star Trek" began much earlier than October, but I don't think this counts
). It was fun, cool, and felt like Star Wars, something I'm a huge fan of. I watched 'Star Trek Into Darkness' not too long after, not as good, but still a pretty cool action flick. I never gave Trek much thought before this, but my dad was a fan of TOS back in his childhood, and told me I'd love it. And since I enjoyed the movies, I thought "what the hell, let's give it a shot". I got Netflix, got a proxy to change to American Netflix, and started TOS.
Here I am now.
I can sum it up as... good. I appreciate how special it was for its time, I appreciate the impact it made on pop culture and just how progressive it was for a show airing in the 1960s, but fuck me if it didn't feel very dated at times. Most of the time I was able to get around that, but some episodes were just.. ugh. At worst, very campy, sometimes sexist, or just kind of repetitive "monster-of-the-week" stuff. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of great episodes, ones that I really enjoyed, but there were times where I felt like moving right on to TNG, mostly throughout Season 3. Also, I one way or another ended up on my phone while watching most episodes (pacing wasn't very good TBH). Boy, that season was a drag. Three or four real good episodes, tops.
The positives definitely outweigh the negatives though. The chemistry/relationship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy is a lot of fun, and there was some character development in that regard. When you look at the show and compare it to others of its time, it deserves all the praise it gets as one of the greatest sci-fi shows ever made, if not the greatest.
The Animated Series, well, I guess you could consider it year four of the five-year mission. While it's probably even harder to watch than TOS for its even more dated look (despite being younger than TOS) and shocking animation, it has some good episodes/stories in there, and with only 22 episodes of 24 minutes length each, you can breeze through them all in a week or less. Also, 'The Counter-Clock Incident' is a much more satisfying ending than 'The Turnabout Intruder'. I mainly watched it for completionist purposes.
I ordered the 'Stardate Collection - Movies 1-10' on Blu-ray a few days back to watch over Christmas, and I'm super excited. I think I'll go TMP, TWoK, TSfS and TVH, and then move on to TNG. Reason being I'm watching in strict order of original air date.
It feels like I'm almost finished the starters, and it's time for the main course. I've been super excited to watch the original films for a long while now, I've been hearing about how amazing TNG is, as well DS9 being as good, if not better, to some, so... this could be a large main course.
Anyway, might be a pointless post to some, not needed, but I just really wanted to share that.
Thanks for giving it a read
